Bribes And Payoffs For College Admission

A couple of days ago the FBI gave a press briefing about what they described as the largest college admissions cheating scheme they had ever attempted to prosecute.

This scheme involved wealthy parents paying anywhere from $15,000 to $500,000 in order to get their children into prestigious colleges by means that were illegal.  Here are a few of the illegal schemes that were disclosed so far:

  1. SAT or ACT scholastic aptitude test scores used for college admissions were falsified by having a highly intelligent person take the actual exam on behalf of someone else, which usually involved the test administrator who was supposed to verify each test taker’s identity, being paid off.
  2. SAT or ACT scholastic aptitude test scores used for college admissions were falsified by bribing the test administrator to go back over the test taker’s answer sheet and correct their mistakes.
  3. Athletic coaches at prestigious colleges were bribed to accept applicants from wealthy families to their college athletic program based on their outstanding athletic performance in a sport, when in fact they had never even participated in that sport and were not an athlete.

Some of the colleges that were named as having participated in the illegal admissions schemes were the University of Southern California and Georgetown.  However, the false SAT and ACT test scores were used to get students into other top colleges where they were not academically qualified for acceptance.

A comprehensive description of everyone who has been charged can be found in this article .

Most people are outraged about this.  What this means, is that very intelligent, hardworking, students with good grades, good SAT and ACT scores, and standout athletes were denied acceptance to colleges and universities because wealthy people paid brides to get their stupid, lazy, no-talent kids in, taking up an available opening.

Though people are outraged, they aren’t surprised either.  Wealthy people do things like this all the time.

Wealthy people have some ability to influence their children’s elementary, middle school, and high school teachers, coaches, and administrators in public schools.  Giving their children the benefit of the doubt on school work, giving their children more playing time in sports, and leniency in disciplinary action.  This is doubly so when wealthy children are enrolled in private schools and preparatory academies.

When a wealthy person’s child is not performing well academically, they have the ability to hire private tutors to give them individual attention in subject areas where they have expertise.  It is very common for wealthy people to enroll their children in courses that teach preparation for maximum scoring on scholastic aptitude tests, so that they will be better able to get into a good college.

Very wealthy people have always had the ability to get their children into prestigious colleges that they were not quite qualified for, by means of influence that were not blatantly illegal, such as being an alumni of the college and a long time financial donor, being a large provider of student internships, or a large employer of alumni.

Paying bribes to test administrators to falsify the scores on scholastic aptitude tests, in one case raising a practice SAT score of 1040 to 1420 on the real SAT test by the examiner correcting the mistakes, is going way to far in trying to pass off a stupid child as an academically gifted child.

But as much as everyone wants to get mad about the stupid, lazy, untalented children of wealthy parents, getting into prestigious colleges that they are not qualified to be at in the first place, whatever college they go to, whether they graduate or not, their wealthy parents will continue to influence people to hire their kid for a job that they are not qualified for, at a pay rate that they do not merit.

This same stupid shit goes on right here in Dickinson, this is nothing new, or nothing that hasn’t been seen before.

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